"So, bring us to our palace; where we'll show
What's yet behind, that's meet you all should know.--"
_Shakspere_.
One bright June morning, a few weeks after the events recorded in
this little chronicle, the large audience chamber of the palace of
Whitehall is thronged with a brilliant company, in whose midst are
seated King Charles and his Queen. With curious eager glances the
fine lords and ladies jostle each other to obtain a closer view of
the dark-eyed handsome young fellow, and the girl standing beside
him, apparently some few years his junior, with whom their majesties
are absorbed in conversation.
The young man's eyes, when he can spare them from the queen, turn
admiringly on his companion, around whose slender neck, white as
alabaster, except indeed where the saucy sun has just bestowed his
touches of tan upon it--his majesty has just cast a chain of
exquisitely wrought gold, from which hangs a double pendant, set with
diamonds encircling the miniatures of himself and Queen Catharine.
"'Tis a souvenir of our regard and affection," the king is saying.
"Requital for your noble service, gold nor diamonds cannot make.
These gems are but poor shadows of truth and fealty like yours, fair
Mistress Ruth."
He paused, he had been about to institute some worn-out comparison
between the beautiful jewels and Ruth's eyes, but a look from the
queen checked him, she saw those eyes were too brimful of tears for
any trifling, and as they welled over, dropping fast upon the basket
on her arm, she made an attempt to speak. "This--" she faltered,
slowly drawing down the handles over her arms.
"Ay?" said the king graciously, as he looked with rather expectant
eyes at the basket. Could it be a present of eggs or cream or such
like, from the farm?
[Sidenote: A converted courtier.]
"Médor!" he exclaimed as he lifted the lid, and the snubby muzzle,
and two velvet brown eyes of the little dog peered forth. "Poor
Médor! Ods-fish! we had been near forgetting thee altogether!"
Notwithstanding which piece of self-confessed royal shortcoming, the
small creature bestowed a lick or two on his master's hands; though
it was a trifle carelessly, and he set up a whine, and vigorous
efforts to wriggle back into Ruth's arms.
"Your kindness in this instance has been very cruel, Mistress Ruth,"
smiled the king, as he let the little creature have its way. "You
have given him such hospitable entertainment since he and I parted
company in the burning room at Newmarket, that now he is loth to be
separated from you. Médor loves you."
Nothing could be more clear than that the dog's sentiments were fully
reciprocated, judging from Ruth's caress, and the wistful look her
eyes bestowed on the little creature.
"Not better than she loves Médor," said Lawrence.
"Say you so? Why then, 'twould be the breaking of two hearts to part
them! A crime no conscience could endure," cried the king. "Say,
fair Mistress, will you keep the little jackanapes for your own?"
Would she? Would she not? Well, as Maudlin always would have it,
Ruth was a strange incomprehensible creature; and if pleasure shone
in her face at the gift of that costly carkanet, what comparison did
that bear to the content brightening it, as she clasped Médor her
own, her very own, in her arms!
[Sidenote: Marriage bells.]
Benefits of a more substantial sort were conferred on Lawrence Lee;
and the estate of Nether Hall was widened by many a broad acre, so
that Farmer Lee came to be accounted one of the wealthiest landowners
of the shire, and the marvel of it was, that few begrudged him this
worldly good fortune; though it would be too much to say none envied
his lot, when one fine morning a year or two later, old Stanstead
Church bells rang a joyous peal, as he led his wife Ruth along the
flower-strewn way to her new home.
Something, nay very much of the old content shines again, now at last
in Ruth's face; though its placid light-hearted look is gone for
ever, and the shadow of past griefs will linger on it, till, herself
an aged woman, they will lay her to her rest, to wait the time when
all shadows flee away.
[Sidenote: Patriots and plotters.]
Still, very bright and blessed was Ruth's future, with the love of
Madam Lee, warm and deep as own mother's love could be; and the
devotion of her husband, and the music of small voices that by and by
began to ring about the old house, and the mysterious alleys of the
hornbeam maze; but no happiness could ever efface for her the memory
of her father's fate.
Stern and implacable, yielding only to the gentler side of his
nature, to stifle it down again, he had deeply loved Ruth, and been
loved by her with a child's heart-felt affection. Honest in his
convictions, loyal to his leader the famous Argyle, bravely as he had
lived, Richard Rumbold, maimed and tortured by his captors, died an
ignominious death at the Market Cross at Edinburgh, two years after
the exposure of the Rye House Plot.
Cruel as these tidings of his end were, it was rendered ten times
crueller by the thought of all those noble hearts that perished for
the cause which had exasperated more desperate, and less disciplined
minds to devise the hideous lengths of bloodshed and assassination;
bringing all alike to the scaffold; patriot and lofty spirits like
Sydney and Russel, grovelling, revengeful self-seekers like so many
of the plotters. Few escaping with their lives, excepting such scum
as those who turned king's evidence like Richard Rumsey, and bought
their evil breath at the price of their old hand-in-glove comrades'
death.
Upon all this, Ruth in the coming years would oftentimes sit and
ponder. Ardent, unshaken little Stuart royalist as she remained to
her latest day, and as Master Lawrence under her good guidance came
to be, it is doubtful whether either was ever brought to declare with
good Madam Lee, that "the king could do no wrong." That question,
however, they left uncontested, and, content with trying to do as
little of it as possible themselves, did so much good as to call down
upon their heads in life and in death the blessings of all the
country side.
[Sidenote: Good company.]
The grandfather's part which the roll of time brought into request at
Nether Hall, was excellently represented by good old bachelor Master
Alworth, who was its frequent guest, and of the many tales he used to
tell the little ones, they liked very much that one of the brave,
dear, real grandfather who died fighting for the king on Worcester
field.
Of old Maudlin, what more can be said than that she passed her
uneventful later years in the snug ingle nook at Nether Hall, made
much of by every member of the establishment.
Adam Lockit, being of another turn of mind, declined to forsake his
quarters in the gatehouse. New masters of the old mansion might come
and they might go. Maltster or magnifico, peasant or peer, but
monarch of his trophy-hung little domain he remained; bequeathing it,
when at last he went the way of all flesh, with his well-seasoned
tales of flood and field, and hobgoblinry, to Barnaby Diggles, who
superadded in fair writing (an accomplishment, by the way, for which
he was beholden to his old master's daughter), that tradition of his
own times, of the famous plot and conspiracy against his gracious
majesty King Charles the Second--known as the Rye House Plot--and
whose valuable assistance towards the putting together of this
present record, it well behoves this chronicler gratefully to
recognize.
[Sidenote: The author of this story.]
Need it be added that the substantial marks of the king's gratitude
which were bestowed on the hostess of the King's Arms, entirely
converted Master Sheppard to his wife's way of thinking? and they
subsided into the happiest peacefullest pair you could find in
Hertfordshire; but then Master Sheppard never again put his fingers
in what his wife called "pies that weren't baked for his eatin';" and
when sea-coal was wanted for the King's Arms' hearth-places, honest
sea-coal it might be, but Mistress Sheppard took good care it should
be conveyed overland in a proper decent wagon; and always stood by in
person, to count the sacks, and to see to the bottom of them too.
As to oysters, she steadily set her face against the things, and
refused ever again to admit the ghost of a shell of one inside her
doors. "If chub and barbel and trout--trout such as his sacred
majesty King Charles, not to speak of the renowned Master Isaak
Walton before him, had partaken of under her roof, was not good
enough for common wayfarin' folks, why, let 'em go farther," she
said, "an' fare worse."
[Sidenote: The end.]
Spiked atop of the spiral chimney of the gatehouse, there hung for
many a year the ghastly decapitated head of one of the arch
conspirators, but long ago it crumbled to nothingness, and no blot
now mars the scene that is as goodly and fair as old England has to
show. Side by side in sweet converse, like old friends, the two
rivers still wander on amid the green pastures. Still round about,
and in and out of the red battlemented walls, the rooks flit, and caw
their never-ending chorus, and the tall trees wave their long arms
day and night, and whisper to those who list to hear it, the story of
the Old Rye House.
THE END.